Contemporary computer-peripheral bus systems, exemplified by the SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) bus as specified by American National Standards Institute (ANSI), allow for a variable number of devices to be positioned at variable distances from each other and from a host computer, along an electrically continuous bus, and to exchange data signals with the computer in baseband pulse form. Many such systems do not require signal filtering, yet signals transmitted may have sharp edge transitions. It has been observed that in some system configurations these signals may encounter bus impedance conditions preventing accurate reception, which in turn could result in system failures of potentially indeterminate nature.
Also, security of data stored in devices coupled to the bus taps, and intended for use of a particular computer linked to the bus, could be easily breached by other devices linked to the bus.
Furthermore, as such buses evolve to serve configurations not contemplated by developers of the original buses, control software executed by the host computer for initializing the bus configuration may become useless relative to new configurations, adding an undesirable software cost to the process of upgrading to the new configurations.
The present invention seeks to provide a bus arrangement which is suitable for efficiently alleviating these problems.